The big chunk of precursor concrete serving as a table seemed too small to hold the map. And still, Goy Beorge had to squint just to make out the tiny spots marking their position. The Chameleon had always known there were other intelligent species out there. The precursor ruins on Karma were proof enough, and without the knowledge found in the devastated archives the Chameleon wouldn't have been able to build these new space flies - or space ships as that Terran explorer had named them when he explained the concepts to them.

It had come as a shock to actually meet an extra-karmestrian, even though the Chameleon had a long history of adapting to their environment and had eventually settled in the ruins of an apparently vastly superior race that had met it's brutal fate eons ago. It was only due to that fact that they were even able to communicate to a very limited degree with that Terran: apparently the Terrans had also found similar ruins, and comparing the results of their studies with our own helped us find a basic level of understanding.

Anyway, the home of the Terran was far away, in the far left corner of that huge map, and the explorer had left many months ago. Goy didn't quite understand his explanation of how he came to be so far from home to start with - he kept bring holes into the ground and pointed at the sky. Whatever it was that brough the explorer here, maybe the archives would provide an answer.

In any case, in exchange for repairs and resources that he required for his long way back home he was eventually willing to share the secrets of the drive that enabled him to cover the vast distances between stars. Now e, the Chameleon, would also be able to explore space, find new worlds, and shape them to our needs - or adapt if that was required...

January 2227 - a new beginning

Notes:

About me: I've run only 2 games and the original campaign on [DL], and then started one game on TA before starting this.I've learned a lot from this forum, and particularly from AARs. Special thanks go to those authors, specifically HydroAC whose detailled AARs helped me a lot to understand the many different aspects of the game, and to Wyndstar whose AAR "Altarian Rebillion" introduced me to the all-labs strategy, and - even more importantly - to the trick he named "flip". I've been using both ever since, and this is the second game where I deliberately planned to do not one, or even two, but at least 4-5 'flips'. I'll come back to that later...

This game will be a whole lot of new ground to cover:

1. Only the second game under [TA] engine, and I left off my first after barely starting it...

2. My first game on Masochistic - at least two steps higher than any of my previous games.

3. First time using Custom Race - in fact the first time I ever used anything but the Terrans!

4. First time using Super Abilities (dsiabled in my first [TA] game)

5. Using the [TA] Iconian Tech Tree and Super Adapter (and - did I mention it? - for the first time using a non-standard tech tree)

6. By far the biggest map I ever used (up to medium in any previous sandbox game; now it's immense)

And, last bot not least, my first AAR

Game settings:

I don't remember all details (can I look it up somewhere?), but I think I have:

Immense Map, abundant stars, planets, habitable planets, anomalies. Rare asteroids. Frequent extreme planets. 9 Majors, 8 Minors. Tech Trade on, Tech Brokering off. Difficulty: Masochistic (it truly is...)

Race and Party: Custum using Iconian Tech Tree and Super Adapter; free techs were New Propulsion Tech(50), Ion Drive(100), Precursor Studies(25), Stellar Cartography(25), Precursor Legacy(0). Note that I skipped Advanced Robotics - at a base cost of only 10 I could learn that on the first turnn, easily. I took 30 Econ, 20 Morale, 4 Sensors, 10 PQ, Luck, and Creativity. Party: Universalists.

P.S.:

This is technically not an AAR as the game is still ongoing (124 turns at this point). However, I've only now decided to try and make an AAR out of it as the game turned out to be more challenging and interesting than any before. It'll take some time to catch up the report to my current status (based on my quarterly saves, mostly)

P.P.S.:

As the game isn't over yet (far from it), the AAR will probably take a couple of weeks to complete. I have a full time job and may not have the patience to stick with the prose, but I'll do my best to provide the facts and insights.